Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word hardly. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word hardly, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say hardly in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word hardly you have here. The definition of the word hardly will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofhardly, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
How lonely they looked as they lay there, and how ill assorted! That little heap had been for two thousand years the wisest, loveliest, proudest creature - I can hardly call her woman - in the whole universe.
With this the second of three games in seven days for Stoke, it was hardly surprising to see nine changes from the side that started against Newcastle in the Premier League on Monday.
Investors face a quandary. Cash offers a return of virtually zero in many developed countries; government-bond yields may have risen in recent weeks but they are still unattractive. Equities have suffered two big bear markets since 2000 and are wobbling again. It is hardly surprising that pension funds, insurers and endowments are searching for new sources of return.
And what gentle flame soever doth warme the heart of young virgins, yet are they hardly drawne to leave and forgoe their mothers, to betake them to their husbands.
1977, John Le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, Folio Society, published 2010, page 40:
While in Chelsea, Anne Smiley pined, taking very hardly to her unaccustomed role of wife abandoned.
I was a fool when I married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn’t have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with.
1866 February, , “The Dawk Bungalow”, in Frazer's Magazine, London, page 219:
"Mr. Cholmondeley, the young men out here are much too hardly worked to allow them time for paying impertinent compliments."
Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly, that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness.
Usage notes
In the modern sense "barely", it occurs before the verb, and is grammatically a negative word. It therefore collocates with ever rather than never.
Compare example sentence with I almost never watch television
Because of the anomalous sense of this word, expressions such as "hardly working" have an opposite meaning to what the etymology ("hard" + "-ly") would suggest. "Working hard" suggests that considerable work is being done, whereas "hardly working" suggests that very little work is being done.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.